


Anachronism

by hitlikehammers



Category: Lost
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-28
Updated: 2009-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-01 02:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard Alpert always was a little different. For the <a href="http://lostfichallenge.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://lostfichallenge.livejournal.com/"><b>lostfichallenge</b></a> #90: Richard Alpert and the <a href="http://18coda.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://18coda.livejournal.com/"><b>18coda</b></a> Prompt #13 - Sempre. AU-ish. <b>Spoilers through 5.10 - He’s Our You; References made to The Lost Experience</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Anachronism

**Author's Note:**

> This is definitely not my normal sort of thing; the result of daydreaming in my history courses, I suspect. As such, the historical context is generally just thrown out there, without much explanation; however, there isn’t anything that, in _not_ being familiar with it, would notably detract from the overall point - mostly, if you know the context, you might just get a thin layer of extra pseudo-meaning.

**I. _Ecce homo_**  
(Behold the man)

 

His dawn comes just past mid-month; the ides of Iulius had passed uneventfully, his mother would often recall in a pitch that reminded him perpetually of the song of a swallow, and though his father was still absent, having departed from Idistaviso in Aprilis at the behest of his brother - a senator under suspicion of Emperor Claudius - the home is calm until the day of his arrival.

To his eternal shame, he doesn’t remember the names of his parents; can barely recall his father’s face, his mother’s scent. All that he does recall - with a clarity that unnerves him, if he’s honest - is the shape of his mother’s lips as she tells him, time and again, the tale of his naming. He really only loves the story, at first, for the sound of his mother’s voice as she describes Iacobus, a priest of Isis from Pompeii, who had helped save her life in childbirth; she had honored him in return with the privilege of naming of her firstborn son.

The sage did not speak at first, his mother makes certain to tell him with a smile - her mouth soft and red where her eyes are lost in his mind, her hands fondling the pendant at her neck every time she tells the story. He doesn’t speak, but only searches in his robes for two wooden amulets, both crossed and hooked at the top, one hanging longer at the sides than its twin.

“Choose,” Iacobus told her, and her melodious voice drops predictably in dramatic impersonation, a sound that vibrates through his recollections in stark contrast to her the normal song of her words, a hymn of her that lulls him to sleep for years to come. The priest told her that they represented life, but each of a different kind, and that she must choose for both herself and her son what their futures would hold.

Her choice, she claims, was arbitrary, but he is not convinced; he believes in fate, in the inescapable unraveling of destiny, and he knows that when she claims the tyet for her own, she freed herself, and in leaving the ankh for him, she left him to suffer.

The priest, she claims, only nodded, and imparted the gift of his name before disappearing into the late summer night. He knows this is a lie, knows it from the very first time by the way her heart flutters against his cheek as she cradles his small frame against her chest, and later, by the way she takes the slightest pause, the way her voice, for only a moment, sounds less like a symphony and more like a sob. He doesn’t know what it means, but as the years sift through his hands like sand, he knows that it means _something_ , and he knows, above all else, that he longs to know what.

The seasons change, and the news of his father’s death in the Battle of Caer Caradoc strikes his mother hard. She doesn’t breathe with the same purpose anymore, and she never tells him the story of Iacobus again. He grows into a man with the shell of her beside him, never straying far from home for fear of her demise in his absence. His coming of age looms on the horizon, and he longs to avenge his father by joining the Legion as soon as he is able - the blood of Germanicus Julius Caesar runs through his veins, and he can taste war on his tongue like a wine; he feels nothing but guilt for his desires when he gazes upon his mother, and nothing but remorse when she slowly starts to fade away.

She dies in September, and there are no swallows to recall her voice as she lies, gasping her last against the inching creep of cold - of winter and death approaching in a single clawing fist, smothering her into the sheets.

Her corpse is burned, and his own hands sift through the dirt and smoldering ash, his skin blistering as he loses himself, the embers still glowing after hours on the pyre mesmerizing him - driving him mad. He seeks out this strange specter, this demon-turned-siren that haunts his waking dreams; he searches for Iacobus with every resource at his disposal, but there is no trace of a man ever existing with such a name. He follows the footsteps, the echoes of tracks in the dust, but Vesuvius had done its duty well - not a trace remains, if ever there was one.

Ricardus is not surprised.

____________________

 

**II. _Non omne quod nitet aurum est_**  
(Not all that glitters is gold)

 

The year is 1241, and Richard can’t help but return to the only place that he can stretch to fit the concept of “home,” even it if doesn’t quite cover the edges.

If he’s anything anymore (which is debatable in itself), he’s a wanderer, fitting himself to the places he takes pause - the Legion had trained him well enough in terms of combat to render him a useful mercenary for small regional conflicts, stretching from the Albis to the Seine, and it was practical need that took care of the rest, that taught him enough useful skills to make himself reasonably valuable to survive after the conflicts are settled. For now, he is untethered, and he doesn’t really mean for his steps to lead him here, but a destination is better, perhaps, than floating adrift with none in mind.

He tries not to think of himself more than necessary, tries not to acknowledge how the years have twisted his soul; tries not to remember that over the course of more than a thousand years, he has not changed at all. At first, it was mind-numbing, soul-crushing - he had spent what seemed like eons trying to hide from it, denied by all he knew as everything from a leper to a spirit, to the Devil himself; a demon set forth in the guise of a man. He had run from the declamation, the condemnation as fast as he could, living as a wild man before he began learning how to blend in and adapt as best he could; learning to read people and their needs as well as he knew his own, and crafting himself into the quickest of studies in order fill whatever niches he could find. He’s fluent in every language on the continent, and can comprehend more dialects than he can rightfully recall; he can build a shed as easily as he can set a bone, and he knows from experience exactly which version of his name to give in order to make it appear as if he’s always been exactly where he is, and was simply never noticed before. He is faceless, nameless - he moves with the tides and follows the flow of the river, never lingering for longer than is necessary, than is prudent. He is remembered briefly and then quickly forgotten, and that is the way he prefers it. He is alone, and alone, he cannot be hurt.

It is easier these days, to forget what it means to be born and to simply exist in the now; for Time may not have been kind to him, but she hadn’t left him with nothing, either.

As it happens, it has taken him a millennium to return to this very spot.

Part of him is hoping that there are answers here, answers to what he is. He knows he will find nothing, knows that there will be no trace of him left here - the death he’s so craved, that he’s thrown himself at like a common whore, will have assumed his fate in the ground of these backlands, as if he’d never existed.

How he wishes this were truth.

Yet truth is what he finds instead when he walks upon the ground he knows once held his mother’s remains, now indistinguishable from the soil itself, with greenery thriving from when she’d been carried on the breeze. He cannot bring himself to linger, the tears too insistent as it is for him to risk tempting them any further. He must carry on, must find another place to cloak himself for a time, a skin which he might swap for his own in the interim.

Hildesheim isn’t desperately far from his roots, and he hasn’t stopped for food in nearly a day, so it’s a logical choice, he argues, to pursue the destination with a dogged, almost crazed enthusiasm; it isn’t just the fact that whispers of immortality are scurrying like termites from the city under cover darkness that sparks his urgency.

It’s a Dominican he seeks, Albert of Cologne, and the Kloster Marienrode is where this priest-turned-alchemist is rumored to dwell. It takes little more than a lie in light of the honest desperation in his eyes to grant him entrance, and faced at last with the middle-aged monk there is no longer any act, no longer any pretense; he drops to his knees and sobs, because for all his years, he has not grown, he has not changed, and he is still a child in so many ways.

Richard tells him of the rumors he has heard, murmurs in the night about the philosopher's stone and a search to cheat death. Albertus neither confirms nor denies the speculation, but asks only, with a crease in his brow, how Richard knows of such things; Richard merely bows his head and confesses that a man knows only what he must, when he must, and it is in this way, blind to all but the path beneath his feet and not beyond, that his destiny is pursued.

These are the words which earn him a place in this world, and in the softening of the features considering him, the nod of the noble, graying head that looms above, he sees himself transformed. He feels renewed in a way that he cannot describe, as if the elixir of life is something they’ve already managed to achieve, and Richard stays for that feeling - blessed and indelible relief too intoxicating to relinquish. He sacrifices his freedom for the drug of it, following Albertus to Paris in search of an explanation, some reason for his unnatural state - solidarity among those who might understand, who seek what he is instead of shunning it.

It is the theology that attracts most - just not Richard, who avoids it with pointed intention - and it isn’t long before he attracts attention in neglecting to do just that. A fellow student, a man called Thomas, asks him his name, wonders where he is from; he gives it as Alpert, because for now, he is from here - and for that, taking his mentor’s name, close as he can, is the only way he can think of to thank him. He hasn’t belonged anywhere in a very long time.

Aquinas simply shakes his head, and comments vaguely that he’s never heard of such a place.

Albertus shies from the occult as time drags on, as the Church honors him more and more frequently and with ever increasing praise, but Richard picks up where he leaves off, making one last relocation back to Regensburg before they begin to go their separate ways. He needs to know if there is a common denominator, some way to reproduce what it is that makes him wrong. Because if it can done, so too can it be undone.

Richard _needs_ it to be undone.

Albertus Magnus, they begin to call him, and Richard grows anxious at the title. They believe in him, they believe in his teachings, his piety. Richard shares their faith in the man, and that’s what frightens him - the prospect of Albertus having already succeeded, somehow, without him knowing it. He loses hope in producing any useful results himself, in finding any conclusions that can actually help him, fix him. Now, all he needs to do is wait patiently, safeguarding the tendrils of progress they may have made until they are forgotten, so that no other living being may come to suffer from their ambitions. _His_ ambition.

He stays in Germany until the very end, until he knows for certain that they have failed. He weeps bitter tears at the Bishop’s tomb in Cologne before fleeing to the French border, but he knows that this is a hidden boon - no man is meant to have forever.

____________________

 

**III. _Bene qui latuit, bene vixit_**  
(One who lives well, lives unnoticed)

 

The year is 1348, but if you asked it of him, he wouldn’t know it. He’s shivering, sweating, and it’s wicked, this sickness; it’s strong and it’s fast and it’s only bits of reality that reveal themselves in a constant ebb and flow, reminding him in futile blinks how majestic the Vosges are, how perfectly the outline they cut above the horizon makes itself seen. It’s the subtle glow behind their dark peaks as the sun flees from the world, the soft promise of cool that descends as the light fades, and its blessed settling upon his burning flesh - these are the things he will miss when he’s gone, when this pestilence finally takes him.

Feverish and alone, it’s the first time he sees the Island.

The image transforms from the line of the mountains, the colors deepening before changing their hue entirely, the spectrum shifting to something brighter, something like the ocean and the sun separated by sands of the whitest snow. The leaves on the trees form shapes he has never seen, in shades he’s never dared to imagine; the surf foams, it grows and beckons and retreats with a rhythm that matches his breathing, anticipates it, and he knows it’s not a dream, not a hallucination - or else, not entirely; he can’t say how he knows, but he’s sure. The vision calls to him, tugs at his heart in a way that threatens everything he thinks he knows in the world. He belongs there, he can feel it; he knows that if he can reach those silver-lined shores, that pearl-dust sand before he breathes his last, he will find some kind of solace, some shred of peace.

He needs this place; he needs to find it.

The man who finds _him_ , however, who carries him in his arms, professes the name of Jacob, and he only barely manages to answer when this stranger, his savior, asks what he is to call his new ailing friend. Jacob, a Jew seeking the sanctuary of anonymity amidst the peasantry to avoid persecution, has no ties to a craftsman such as Richard, has no reason to stop for him and risk his own life to bring him to shelter, but he does so without complaint, and the press of his hands upon him is like fire, before it freezes, even through Richard’s tattered clothing, soaked as it is with the perspiration of malaise. He lays him on a plank of wood - where, Richard doesn’t know - and uses empty sacks of grain to pillow his neck; he can’t feel the way they rub his skin raw, anymore; it doesn’t even compare to the throbbing in his head, the way his heart speeds and slows on a whim, flooding his brain fit to burst before strangling it, suffocating it, leaving it to die of thirst.

He’s losing his mind.

They both know what it is he’s brought to this poor village, both know that the Plague has been spreading, and that he doesn’t have much time left. And yet, Jacob doesn’t leave him, refuses to abandon Richard in order to save himself. He mutters in Hebrew, prayers to a God that Richard doesn’t know, but thinks he might like to, if the gentle palm of ice on his forehead belongs to Him, the cool condensing quickly on his chest of His doing.

The words that Jacob murmurs between breaths are subtle, soothing - Adonai Eloheinu.... Barukh ata, Adonai Eloheinu - Richard only picks up bits and pieces of the pleas his caretaker sends to the heavens, but listening to the cadence makes his lungs seem to burn a little less - or else, helps him to ignore it a little more. The slow brush of a damp cloth upon his brow, deft fingers streaming through his sweat-drenched hair; they don’t stop, they never stop, they just keep him rooted in this world, tracing circles about his skin to ease his coughing, running the indentations of his spine as his stomach heaves and he retches, vomiting blood. This stranger, this man who owes him nothing, knows nothing of him; all he does is silently wipe his mouth, wet his lips, and hold his hands, keeping him steady - letting him know that he hasn’t slipped away just yet. Part of him is grateful for this, more than he can ever possibly convey.

And yet, the simple fact remains that he _should_ die. He _wants_ to die. It’s his time, he’s almost sure of it, and the Island is waiting for him - he is certain.

He should die, but he doesn’t, and that’s what scares him most of all.

He fears that this will never end.

Weak and disoriented after what feels like an endless sleep, Richard’s eyes open to a darkened cabin where he lies, drained and breathless and completely alone. Jacob, his personal guardian angel, is gone when he finally comes to.

____________________

 

**IV. _Est autem fides credere quod nondum vides; cuius fidei merces est videre quod credis_**  
(Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe)

 

The year is 1509, Anno Domini, and after five years in the friary, he has traveled from St. Thomas’ in Leipzig to Wittenberg to study. It is only by chance that encounters a young priest named Luther as he starts to lose focus on his work one evening, the sound of his quill scratching against the parchment only a minor detriment to the call of distraction.

“These relics,” the man huffs as he sits next to him, his arms folding in a huff that flutters the pages of Richard’s books as the billowing sleeves of his robes fall to the table; “they drive me mad.”

Richard smiles indulgently, a closed-mouth stretch of lips that isn’t encouraging by any means, but it doesn’t give the young priest any reason for pause. “Do you not think it strange,” he asks, his voice honestly curious as he narrows wide brown eyes towards Richard, whose hand is poised to return to his work; “that they so honor these pieces of the dead, soulless scraps of living men as if they were breathing still, could help them still?”

There’s an eagerness in those eyes that clenches Richard’s heart within his chest - he remembers that fire, that passion; that honest and unquenchable zest for life. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, yearning to soak it in and feel it, just for a moment, to reclaim what he’s long since forgotten.

“I believe,” Richard speaks softly, his chin dipping to brush against the neck of his tunic as he steeples his hands in front of him, watching Luther from between his fingers, “that a man can see in a thing many different ends, depending on the angle from which he watches.”

His companion chuckles warmly, though not without sadness, not without irony. “You speak wise words,” he grants, yet there is a challenge in those eager eyes. “But I wonder if you believe them so steadily as they slide from your tongue, Brother Richard.”

Richard nods once in concession, dropping his hands to rest upon the sheets of parchment before him, feeling the yet-drying ends of his letters as they stain the skin of his palm. “We preach best what we need to learn most, don’t you think?”

Luther has no response to that, which does not surprise Richard - he’s been here long enough to know that no one ever does.

“It was fear which brought me here,” the priest confesses suddenly, and Richard’s eyes snap upward to take him in, the sardonic curve of his lips belying his discomfort with this fact, this perceived darkness within himself.

“I often wonder if it isn’t fear that prompts us to pursue most of the things in our lives.” Richard knows that it is not a darkness, only a truth better accepted than denied.

“You speak in riddles.”

Richard shakes his head, the bunched fabric of his hood rustling with the motion. “Not at all, Father Martin. I speak only what I feel in my heart to be true.”

And if he were to speak all of it, he would be sent to the Inquisition without delay.

“And very well it is, for you, to say it with such purpose.” Richard is thankful for the flickering candlelight which illuminates them, playing on their features so dishonestly - for if Luther had noticed the way his lips had curled at such a compliment, he would likely have taken offense. “Enough of such matters,” he commands with a wave of his hand, disturbing the flame engulfing the blackened wick before them, “what is it that keeps you from sleep at such an hour?”

Richard stifles a laugh, because there are so many valid answers to such a question, but his eyes fall onto the texts beside him, each of them pondering, predicting, asking the very same questions he’s been asking himself for centuries, all professing the one word he wants to know more intimately, wants to feel with the abandon of one so ready to meet his maker, he would thoughtlessly cross hellfire to reach his end.

Eschaton.

“What do you think follows after death?”

Anywhere else in the world, it would seem like an unprovoked inquiry. For the first time, Richard is glad is isn’t anywhere else.

“Home follows,” Luther answers with only the slightest delay. “After death, we return home.”

The mention of home makes bile rise in Richard’s throat, and he feels the rather familiar sensation of being a wolf in sheep’s clothing here among the people of God. Because this is not his home, and when he tries to picture where it lies instead, all he can see within his mind’s eye are endless lines of green, the hearty trunks of trees in a jungle that feels like his own; his heart leaps just a tad as he can smell the salt and the sand, the humidity on his bare skin - he is naked suddenly, beneath his habit, and the sun warms his flesh with an audacity that he has never known; this is his element, this place is from whence he comes, and to which he wants nothing more than to return, dead or alive.

Richard quickly gathers his effects and bids Luther goodnight, praying almost out of habit as he retreats that the word of this priest from Erfurt is correct.

____________________

 

**V. _Ad infinitum_**  
(To infinity without end)

 

The year is 1635, and Richard is in Utrecht, studying under René Descartes - a man whose name seems familiar from a time from which he has been long removed; a time, it seems, that remembers him better than he remembers it.

Descartes lectures them, tells them that the mind can overcome the laws of physics, can not only transcend the barriers of the physical world but shatter them entirely; the rules do not apply to the mind, and that gives Richard hope, but only for a moment. This man _has_ proven the existence of a benevolent God, after all - Richard sneers at the thought as he labors at the problem before him, inequalities swimming before his tired eyes. There is no benevolent God, and if there is, he is outweighed a hundred-fold by the Devil, for a curse like Richard’s can only be the work of Hell.

He scratches out the fifth number of his tenth line of the output computation for the formula, seeing the mistake in his notation earlier on - the superscripts are indistinct in his handwriting, and given the hour and his natural distraction, he missed the square and though it just a two. A stupid mistake, and one he cannot afford. He needs to finish this, needs to solve the problem; because Descartes believes that they can do anything, solve anything, under the revelation that the mind is nonmaterial. And Richard intends to prove him right.

He starts with the predictions of _The Prophecies_ , dissecting the quatrains of Nostradamus with mathematical precision, assigning particular sections, specific implications and revelations with numerical equivalents, making them solid and rational and removing them from the arena of debate; poetry reduced to variables - because while Richard’s soul might long for the perfect rhyme, his mind requires something concrete. Something that will convince him, once and for all, that he is not the spawn of some evil thing, the result of some terrible mistake of the natural order. He needs _proof_ \- irrefutable and undeniable - that he is meant to be here.

And to do so, he is going to calculate the end of the human race. He is going to prove that while he may be wrong, he too shall one day perish from the world; that for all of his peculiarities, for all of his defectiveness; when all is said and done, Richard Alpert is but a man, and he is not above fate.

He comes to the end of the problem without even recognizing it, noticing only after he fills the entire page that the solution repeats itself many times over, the same string of numbers filling the paper nearly three separate times, though not quite. He has done it.

And now he must only isolate the values of y, the dependent variables - the answers to the questions:

4\. 8. 15. 16. 23. 42.

He circles the numbers in the long chart of digits, every place they occur. Stepping back, he blinks once, twice before covering his mouth to strangle the scream as a distinct and highly unmistakable pattern coalesces before his eyes. An uppercase Tau with a horseshoe closed above it. A loop-topped cross. Crux ansata.

The ankh.

He traces the shape with his fingertip slowly, taking in the familiar symbol with horror before the true implications of what it means become inevitably clear in his mind. This pattern of number has no limit. It does not end. It continues on, without variation or deviation towards infinity, and it never stops.

Life eternal.

The numbers, that particular string of number unsettles him. There is no significance to them, they don’t mean anything, but together, when his lips slowly move around the names of each numerical figure staring back at him, stark and permanent, blasphemous in his own hand - together, they sound like an omen. A warning.

On a whim, he goes back to the original equation, returns to the whimsical half-calculations he’d toyed with months prior, looking for the predictor values, the independent variables. Six of them. Perhaps he’s incorrectly copied one of them, switched a number here or there.

He flips through the The Prophecies, checking the verses in question with a fleetness born of practice - he knows the lines by heart. His stomach drops as he reaches the last selection: there is no mistake.

There is something very wrong with this equation. And he’s fairly certain he can make a valid guess as to what.

The mind is limitless; it obeys no laws.

He burns the parchment with shaking hands, and vows never to speak of what he has done.

Those numbers follow him, though, engrained within his nightmares.

____________________

 

**VI. _Respice post te, mortalem te esse memento_**  
(Look around you, remember that you are mortal)

 

The year is 1715 when he hears the call, a gentle murmur that starts like the echo of his own heartbeat in his ear, yet slowly grows to rush with his blood, permeating deeper into his bones, his veins until he can feel nothing else, _see_ nothing else - until all he hears is the longing, the call to do just one thing:

_Take to the sea._

He leaves for the New World with a group of religious immigrants, because they are the quickest route to the ocean he has. He speaks very little, feigning ignorance and simply smiling when they attempt to speak to him in a variety of tongues. Yet there is a single boy, a young Pole named Jacob, who shares his bread with him on the fifth day at sea - to him, Richard says quite simply: _Thank you._

He says it only once, and in English - he doesn’t even think to try Polish, really, for reasons he doesn’t know - but the child seems to understand. And it’s enough to see the child named Jacob smile; enough to drown out the calling, the urging to the ocean that throbs in his chest and whispers in his ear. He’s more grateful for that than the bread, but the boy doesn’t know it; the boy will never know it.

They land in Virginia, and Richard wastes a short time as a professor at the College of William and Mary before he picks up and heads south. He travels until he finds himself devoid of company, alone in the wilderness, and he lives off the land like a true pioneer until colonization hits the Deep South head on, chasing away his wild game and encroaching upon the land on which he’s built himself the one-room shack that he calls home. He adapts, however, as he is wont to do, and eventually finds himself to be a respectable member of society in Savannah, helping to bridge the language barrier between the countless communities trying to carve their individual identities into the untamed earth beneath their feet. He becomes a pillar of the community without even trying, and it is here that Richard realizes that maybe his destiny isn’t to drift or to blend, but to stand; to lead.

He also finds that he wouldn’t mind it much if this indeed turns out to be the case.

But he honestly thinks that he could make a life here - maybe not forever, but for a time. There’s so much _space_ , so much to explore and to discover, and he could travel for decades before he’d tread the same ground twice; long enough for anyone who might recognize him to have moved on to better things. It’s the land of opportunity, and it’s his for the taking, if he wants it.

He’s not sure if it’s a blessing in disguise, or disguised as a blessing.

It’s a French Huguenot girl that distracts him from deciding either way, catching his eye with her fair skin and soft features, her upturned-nose and her long, thick auburn curls. She can’t be more than twenty; she is pious, and he doesn’t care, because he doesn’t have to believe in God to believe in her - in the way she makes him smile, or the feel of her shoulder beneath the palm of his hand, the way it molds to her so perfectly. She has no prospects, she has no past - her ailing parents died on the ship over, and her siblings stayed behind; yet as it happens, he has more than enough of both to provide for the pair of them. He spends his days with her as often as he can, and she gives to him her nights as best she can manage, and it fits; it makes him feel alive, and for a moment with her in his arms, he can imagine that one lifetime is all he has, and all he would need if he could spend it with her.

It’s a lie, of course, but it’s one he can believe in this time; if only for a while.

The whispers, though; they see through his pretenses, and they do not surrender.

_Take to the sea._

_But he has_, he protests silently, and he drives it into the ground like an anchor, holding him where he stands with every day that passes in her company, with every hour he contemplates marrying her, giving her a child. Months pass, and then years, and they are happy in their own way; yet each time he has to answer the voice, the otherworldly whisper haunting his every step, every time he has to tell it that he has already done what it has asked, he can feel the lie of it all settle heavily around him, even if he cannot comprehend what it means.

_Richard, take to the sea._

He knows that he is fooling himself, knows that this is transient - that he may be happy, may _think_ he is happy, but in reality, it will pass. There is a future out there for him, but this is not it; there is a promise of forever that still glimmers on the horizon, and he has yet to reach it still. And it’s this knowledge that slowly poisons every small joy, every stolen moment, every caress of skin and makes it bitter, stoic, and harsh upon his flesh, upon his heart; until eventually, there is no happiness left.

He leaves no trace, no word; only what is left of his accounts is given in her name according to the will left tucked beneath his bed. She will never know where he has gone, and while leaving her destroys him, it also frees him. He is not where he is meant to be, and he’s waited too long to abandon the journey now; and deep down, he knows this. It’s what makes it so easy to walk away - to reach the coast and barter for a dinghy and sail away without the foggiest idea as to where he might be headed, navigating the waters on faith alone.

For the rest of his days, he will wonder what might have been. He will never regret, not really, but he will always wonder.

____________________

 

**VII. _Per aspera ad astra_**  
(Through the thorns to the stars)

 

Richard doesn’t know what year it is.

He feels as if he has drifted forever, as if an age has passed, but nothing is different, nothing has changed - only nothing is the _same_ , either.

Bruised, winded, and underfed, he drags himself from the crumpled frame of his sea vessel, damaged in a storm of which there is no evidence now; only that does not concern him. What concerns him is what he sees when he finally manages to lift his head, for the sight of it alone steals the strength from his arms, the breath from his lungs.

He collapses onto the beach in utter disbelief; suddenly, he knows where he is.

It’s just like he’s envisioned it, for so very long. Every image, every memory he’s managed to hold to of this place - it is everything he’s ever dreamed it to be. The sand is like silk against his arms, the sun hot and brilliant on his face, but not blinding. He throws himself onto the beach, limbs sprawled and chest heaving as he breathes deep the scent of water and fruit and leaves; he soaks in the sweet nectar of growing things, of perpetual and undeterred life with every gasping breath as he realizes that - finally - he is _here._

There are so few sounds, only the gentle lap of the waves against the shore and the distant echo of rustling leaves and calling native beasts to contend with the pounding of his heart as he burrows lower into the sand. He can’t quite wrap his mind around it, can’t quite understand the emotions that are flooding him without relent; they are foreign to him, so removed from who he is now that they feel almost artificial - he cannot feel these things anymore.

But this place, this island proves him wrong, because he does feel them - wonder, awe, shock, gratefulness, trepidation - all of the things he thought he’d slowly but surely left behind, he is gifted with once more. Here, he is no one, he is brand new; and for the first time in centuries, he feels like a child, sees through the eyes of a child and hears through a child’s ears - reborn to a mother of flora and salt, of heat and rain and the clean ocean air.

Only the Island knows his soul, his name. Only the Island.

Hours pass, and he simply watches the clear blue of the sky as it seeps away into something dark enough to rival the ocean itself, churning but still beautiful, still inviting to his weary eyes as he blinks up at the emerging line of stars, the slow cut of the full moon through the ether, fighting off the last of the sunrise glowing violet like a dying fire in the west. He digs his fingers into the sand as a breeze washes over him, the limp strands of his salt-soaked hair beginning to dry in a hard crust against his forehead; there is a chill on the air as the light wanes, but he doesn’t feel it - he never will. Nothing can touch him here. Not here.

He hears footsteps, but doesn’t turn. He feels safe, he feels right, and the feeling does not waver or recede, even as he catches the cloudy billowing of black smoke from the corner of his eye; it’s everywhere, but there is no scent of it.

He doesn’t have to look up when the footsteps stop, when he feels a gaze that seems to come from everywhere level upon him; he doesn’t have to waste words - he knows who has come for him.

“Hello, Jacob.”

The smoke retreats with a hiss, and gentle groan. “You’ve finally made it.” The voice is subtle, familiar but so much more than anything he’s ever heard before; it possess every man, woman, and child Richard has ever known and distills them, shores them up into a whisper, desperate and urgent but soft; unassuming, for all its demands. “Why are you here?”

This gives Richard pause, the edge to Jacob's tone. He hauls himself up, turning himself over on his elbows and blinking into the darkness - he can only see the ghost of a figure, obscured by the night and the undulating cloud of smoke. “Excuse me?”

“Why are you here, Richard Alpert?”

Richard feels the blood rush from him, frightened for just a moment. “Because...” he swallows, crawling to his knees, only vaguely recognizing that they no longer ache. “Because you... you told me to come here.”

“Precisely.” There is a sneer of satisfaction that penetrates the affirmation, and Richard does indeed feel like a child - patronized and disciplined. He doesn’t much care for the feeling, having long since outgrown it. “I brought you here, Richard,” Jacob reminds him plainly. “Do not neglect to remember that.”

This is wrong.

“There are rules you will need to follow to stay on my Island, Richard,” Jacob continues, his voice slow and deliberate; imperious. “Rules that can only be broken, only be changed when I desire them to be. Do you understand?”   
He cannot respond, cannot even begin to imagine what this means; cannot reconcile what his Island is doing to him, why it brought him here, why this man, this man who he feels he knows from so many places and so many times, is making him feel alone again. He is suddenly immobile, as if frozen by a force beyond him, and he feels himself exposed: every inch of who he is, what he’s done - his hopes, his dreams, his fears, his regrets, the secrets he’s kept and lies he’s told for hundreds upon hundreds of years - all of it is on display, awaiting judgement, and Richard cannot move; cannot breathe.

There is a heavy sigh that breathes at last from the trees to the ocean itself, the smoke clutching at Jacob’s heels finally flattening to engulf Richard as well, and he can see nothing, do nothing but breathe it in, just a bit - only he can’t. It is _wrong_. He grows lightheaded, he needs air, but something warns him to endure, something not from the figure towering over him or the menacing whispers that seem to emanate from the black cloud looming above, but instead from the ground beneath him, from the very depths of this place, the heart of it. He feels pitted, suspended for an instant in the grasp of a mighty struggle, a power play and he must prove himself, must not relent.

There is a blast, like that of a horn but deeper, more furious, and the smoke dissipates. Richard gasps for air, feeling at the same time both silent praise and disdain lavished upon him, though the sources of each he cannot determine.

He has passed the test.

“You do not understand,” Jacob stoically observes. “But you will, in time This is your purpose.” Richard gets the distinct impression that he’s being smiled at, though he cannot see it; whether the smile is encouraging or placating, he doesn’t know, and his stomach twists with the uncertainty.

It is only as Jacob walks away that he looks human, the silhouette he cuts against the night that of a man, illuminated by the moonlight until the jungle devours him, leaving just his farewell to echo as his footsteps disappear in the sand:

“Welcome home, Richard.”

And it’s true, and he’s grateful; but it scares him.

____________________

 

**VIII. _Non sibi sed suis_ **  
(Not for one's self but for one's people)

 

The year is 1954, and Richard does not trust Charles Widmore. 

The boy had come under circumstances most suspect, only months prior, and he had been a thorn in the very back of Richard’s mind from the first moment. He couldn’t place exactly what it was about the young that unsettled him, he just knew that something was off; he could sense these things.

Jacob always told him when to expect new arrivals. Jacob hadn’t told him about Widmore.

The boy is out on recon with the girl named Ellie, and Richard is fairly certain that they’re fucking substantially more than they’re scouting the perimeter. With all of the military activity they’ve seen come on and off the Island in the past few years, they need to be prepared. As such, these two would not be his first choice to secure their position; unfortunately, it wasn’t until Epswerth returned that Richard had realized that Widmore had switched his watch shift to coincide with his girlfriend’s.

He’s not surprised that it’s Ellie who comes back first with news of a ship docking, but he is surprised that it’s a commercial vessel, and not a military craft, apparently flying Danish colors. 

He is intrigued, but not yet concerned. Civilians were always easy enough to deal with, the few times they managed to cause them any trouble. They were either persuaded to take their leave, or else terminated with minimal effort. Simple protocol. 

Widmore returns to camp within fifteen minutes of Ellie’s arrival, the fly on his trousers left open and the flush on his cheeks due to more than the unseasonable heat. Richard decides to drag him along to investigate the new arrivals as a way to keep him better occupied.

They reach the shoreline to find a crew of just seven men, none of whom carry weapons and all of whom look to the same man - tall, with sharp features, piercing eyes, and hair graying at the temples - when Richard and Charles emerge from the trees.

He introduces himself, with a thick accent appropriate to flag on his ship, as Alvar Hanso, and Richard knows the name, from the wreckage of the damn slaver in the middle of the jungle. He finds himself growing impatient, waiting for the connections to become clear, but Hanso is an open book - all dialogue - and hides nothing. He explains why they are there, the anomalies they have detected at the coordinates of this place; how there is no record of this Island’s existence, and how they have high hopes for the work they might now be able to pursue in such an environment.

Richard wants to know what kind of work. 

The possibilities, Hanso tells him enthusiastically, are endless, now that they have found the Island. Scientific research of all manner and scale. Predictive mathematical models with unfathomable accuracy. Cures for epidemics. Strategies for healing, not just masking illness, methods that truly _work_. Electromagnetic research. Genetic mapping and comprehension. Dissection and manipulation of the space-time continuum. Life altering discoveries. Perhaps, even life _extension_ , itself.

Life Extension. It’s so ironic that it’s almost laughable. 

Except that it isn’t.

Richard doesn’t know what keeps him from shooting the lot of them and dragging the bodies out to sea, but instead, he simply leaves them with a warning; he tells them to leave his Island - to forget it, and to never return. The Dane only looks supremely confused, and a little bit crestfallen as Richard walks away, but there’s a gleam in Hanso’s eyes that makes it clear that he’s been heard. And it’s not lost on Richard that Widmore seems a little bit too intrigued for comfort by the ideas this man’s been spewing.

They’re gone by sunrise, but Richard knows that they’ll be back.

____________________

 

**IX. _Mundus vult decipi_ **  
(The world wants to be deceived)

 

The year is 1961, and Richard is confused. Almost heartbroken.

Why did the boy have to chose the knife?

The compass is his, of course, and the sand is the Island’s, but the Laws... the Laws belong to Jacob. 

There are Rules. Rules they all have to follow.

John choses the Island first, without question. Choses Richard with a steady hand. And yet, while he considers Jacob, he does not commit to him. 

Richard sees the certainty in those young eyes, and he can’t shake the quiet intimation that this subtle act is a sign; the shape of things to come.

He picks the weapon, and Richard leaves immediately, knowing that if he stays, he will find a way to twist the choice. To make this one work. Because _damnit_ , this boy is supposed to be the one. There _is_ no one else.

It is in walking away, the soles of his polished shoes sounding heavy against the concrete, that he finds himself doubting for the very first time; finds himself wondering if Jacob understands as much as he implies, controls as much as he desires.

Problem is, Richard doesn’t actually know _who_ the knife belongs to.

____________________

 

**X. _Facta, non verba_ **  
(Deeds, not words)

 

_When is your birthday?_

It’s a simple question.

Richard runs into young Benjamin Linus in all of the places the boy shouldn’t be. After their first encounter, he seems to find him everywhere. Ben never again asks to come with him, but sometimes they talk; Richard writes it off to Jacob, at first - the idea that Jacob wants them to meet, wants Ben to join them. Richard is tempted, every time he tells Ben that it’s getting late, that he should get home - every time he walks Ben to the Truce Line in order to be sure he gets back safely, he wants to tell him that the wait is almost over, that he’s been very patient, and that he will be rewarded soon; he is special, and he belongs with them. He wants to tell him one evening when the sun begins to set that instead of going back, he can come with Richard, and he’ll never have to return to the Dharma Compound again, but he doesn’t. He never does. Jacob has said nothing, and Richard doesn’t quite trust himself yet to act so significantly without Jacob’s explicit consent; not for lack of self-confidence, but for fear of what retribution will mean for them all.

Jacob is nothing if not vengeful. 

He talks to the boy about where he is from, about his family; he finds out how, exactly, his mother died, and how his father still blames him. He sees the bruises on the boy’s skin, but never asks after them, and Benjamin never mentions their raison d'être, though it isn’t hard to guess. Richard figures out that Ben _does_ , in fact, know what the word ‘Hostile’ means. He also knows words like alcoholic and hairline fracture, temporal anomaly and electromagnetic research. Richard finds that Ben knows a lot of things.

And it’s then that Richard realizes that he only ever comes across young Ben, wandering in the wilderness past the Pylons, when Jacob is silent, when Richard has to carve his own path and decide for himself what is best for his people, best for this Island.

It’s a mildly unsettling revelation.

And then Benjamin brings him an Apollo Bar. He says that it’s a gift. For his birthday. Because, he says, he isn’t sure when Richard’s birthday is, and the boy’s father had forgotten his, yet again, and he doesn’t want anyone else to feel left out. To feel neglected, or forgotten.

Richard hasn’t received a gift in a very long time. He doesn’t know what to say, and so says nothing, but Benjamin is used to the quiet. He knows what it means.

Richard had forgotten birthdays.

____________________

 

**XI. _Parva scintilla saepe magnam flamam excitat_**  
(The small sparkle often initiates a large flame)

 

The year is 1976, and he’s waiting near The Flame for his contact.

He doesn’t quite understand what possessed him to make this bargain, to strike this deal, but he was sure of it, entirely sure - and that makes him skeptical. These people, this Truce - it makes him uneasy. They are intruders, invaders; and Jacob demands that they be allowed to live. And while he knows that this man is not one of them, he also knows that he doesn’t belong on the Island. He _can’t_ belong.

“You’re late,” Richard states simply as the sound of booted footsteps crashing through the overgrowth overcomes the rustle of leaves to his left. The blonde man grunts, the curtain of his hair shifting as he crosses his arms defensively - he gets this way sometimes, forgets how, exactly, this arrangement works.

“You knew things that I couldn’t explain,” Richard reminds him, “things I couldn’t rationalize.” He takes a step closer, encroaching on the ever-imposing Head of Security’s personal space, reducing him to a mere man, stuck outside of his time. “And that would have been enough reason for me to kill you.” He stops for a moment, lets that sink in. “But I let that slide, _James_ , because you agreed to give me something in return, to express your gratitude for my tolerance of your...” He pauses searching for the appropriate word, the one that fits; the one that does not demean, exactly, but clearly insinuates distaste, disadvantage: “ _Incongruence._ ”

LaFleur flinches, though to anyone else it might seem like just a twitch; he knows, though, knows that he is at Richard's mercy, knows that this is not his game, and he cannot change the rules - he is trapped, and destined only to play along as best he can, and cheat the house when the opportunity rises, hoping to be dealt a better hand this time around than he was the last.

“If you’re not willing to deliver,” Richard threatens with the cold resonance of an ultimatum, “we’re going to have to renegotiate our agreement.”

“Hold your horses, Alpert,” James growls, digging in his pocket and extracting a heavily folded and crumpled stack of papers. “If I’m gonna be your goddamn Deep Throat, I figure I might as well give you the keys to the Watergate.”

“Interesting metaphor,” Richard notes as he takes the proffered papers, unfolding them and scanning them quickly; blueprints. He’s seem them before.

“It’s not the proposed construction plan that I’m interested in,” he sighs, disappointment laden deliberately in his tone. He needs James to think he’s completely dissatisfied, needs to convince him to talk in order to maintain the status quo. “We already have people on that.” Which isn’t a complete lie, for once. They do have people scouting this area, waiting for that idiot Radzinsky to forget where he is, forget that they might be watching. “What I’m interested in,” Richard continues, his voice dropping an octave, because he really is wondering, and truly is worried that this is more than a coincidence, “is why they’re building The Swan virtually on top of that nuclear warhead you seem to know so much about.”

The silence is deafening as James’ eyes grow ever wider; wide to the point of comedy, perhaps, if it had been someone else. “ _That’s_ where you buried it?” There’s an urgency, a clarity in that single hiss of a question that burns through the drawl of his accent, and makes Richard’s skin crawl as he takes a step forward, looking directly into Jim LaFleur’s eyes as he instructs with pointed intention:

“Why don’t you tell me just what, exactly, this particular station is for.”

He has them eating out of the palm of his hand. Jacob would be proud.

____________________

 

**XII. _Homo vitae commodatus non donatus est_**  
(Man has been lent to life, not given)

 

The year is unimportant; it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that this boy is dead. He was patient, he was loyal, and now he is as good as dead.

The long, thin form of the child is stretched, limp and devoid of life, no matter how warm the blood pooled beneath him feel as it clings to Richard's hands. He presses trembling fingers against the hole in his chest, tracing the tear of his shirt, the broken skin and the sweet stick of blood, the flow of it already slowing, already catching up with the final gasps of his lungs, the last feeble contractions of a failing heart that Richard can feel, but only just, struggling beneath his hands. There are tears upon his cheeks as he runs shaking palms over his face in shock, in despair, leaving trails of martyred blood to trace the lines of his features.

How could Jacob allow this? How could he let this happen?

Unless...

It’s the knowledge that this innocent creature had to die alone that cuts him the deepest, and suddenly, Jacob doesn’t matter. Because Richard knows what it’s like to be alone, and only Richard himself deserves to die that way.

This Island needs people like Benjamin Linus. And he is going ensure that it doesn’t have to suffer the loss of him. It’s time Richard proved his worth to this place, and damn the consequences.

It’s time.

____________________

 

**XIII. _Numquam se minus solum quam cum solus esset_**  
(You are never so little alone as when you are alone)

 

He doesn’t have to look at a calendar to know that it is a Wednesday, the Twenty-Second of September, 2004. He knows this, because it was in the numbers. He knows this, because this is where they begin.

The Island lets Ben live, lets him grow, but at a terrible price. The selfish part of Richard resents him for it, but when he closes his eyes and see the tears streaming down that child’s face, sees the fear frozen in his stare as blood seeps from his chest, he knows he could not have done differently. When those eyes stare back at him to this day, now from the face of a man, he knows that there was no choice, no decision. He would never have acted differently.

Jacob doesn’t come to him after that, not once, and Richard finds that when he tries to seek him out, he only encounters danger, only ever comes to harm. Little things go wrong - he loses things, takes longer to heal - and he knows this is Jacob’s way of shunning him, of expressing his displeasure. He wants to fight it, wants to deny it, or else confront it, confront _him_ , but he doesn’t. Richard knows that he has defied him, and he will not ask for forgiveness. He was right, and if that means he must suffer, then so be it. He turns his attentions instead of Ben, impressionable, hero-worshiping Ben who looks at their camp with eyes so bright and eager that Richard can’t quite reconcile them with those he met with that night in the jungle, so dim and in pain, already half-gone from the world. He teaches Ben to live not on the Island, but _with_ the Island. He teaches Ben to take his place.

It takes years of uncertainty, of always glancing over their shoulders and jumping at the sight of their own shadows, before Jacob takes a liking to a teenage Ben on the cusp of adulthood, lets him stumble across his cabin in a place they’d looked for it many years before, and yet had found no trace of it. Ben tells him exactly how he plans to rid them of the Dharma Initiative, once and for all, and Jacob is pleased with the idea; though Richard finds Ben’s resolve towards wholesale slaughter a bit disconcerting, he assists Ben in every way that he can - not because he agrees, but because Jacob approves. And the only two things Richard has left are the promise of Jacob’s approval, and the assurance that Ben will succeed.

He does succeed. Of course he succeeds. But Jacob does not come to Richard. If anything his communion with Ben is only rendered more exclusive as the Island passes to his leadership alone.

Richard spends years wondering if saving Benjamin Linus was a mistake. Yet, when the plane breaks apart overhead, Ben acts swiftly and without hesitation. There is apprehension in his voice as he shouts his orders - he is frightened, but it doesn’t stop him, and Richard knows that the only choice was also the right choice; Ben knew this day was coming, and he was ready. 

Without the mantle of leadership, Richard finds that he can slip away unnoticed in the frantic rush to infiltrate the crash sites and prepare for the road ahead of them as they fortify their position, and for that - for once - Richard is grateful. He knows who will be on that plane, or else he suspects, and it will change everything. For all of them.

He wonders if Ben knows that.

He wanders into the jungle - seeking solace, seeking comfort - and as always, the jungle provides, enveloping him with its perfume and setting his mind at ease. He doesn’t need Jacob. He doesn’t need anyone. He has his Island.

And then there are the whispers; they come to him with a fervor he has never seen before, assaulting him from all sides in a thousand different languages, some he knows and many he doesn’t, many that don’t even sound like words, but one phrase is always there, louder and more intimate than the others, connected to him in some visceral way that transcends space and time:

_Graviora manent._ Greater dangers await.

That voice, that _voice..._ he knows it. It calls out from his dreams, his nightmares, and he can never quite place it, never quite decide where it belongs.

It sounds like birds trilling; the song of the swallow.

He clutches his head as the whispers speed past him, dropping to his knees with the overwhelming pain of hearing so many sounds at so many pitches, saying far to many things all at once; he gasps for breath as the voice he knows but doesn’t know imparts one last piece of wisdom upon him:

_Mvlti svnt vocati, pavci vero electi._ Many are called, but few are chosen.

Then it’s gone - they’re all gone - and Richard is curled in the dirt. But he’s beginning to understand, now; he beings to see what it means. He was brought here for a reason. He was called, and he was chosen.

And they are still his people; he is still their leader. They need him. _He_ needs _them_.

Jacob might be done with him, but the Island sure as hell isn’t.

He has work to do.

____________________

 

**XIV. _Fides quaerens intellectum_ **  
(Faith seeking understanding)

 

He’s standing, overlooking the valley when Benjamin comes to him. The date is superfluous - it doesn’t matter _when_ it happens, just so long as it does.

“He’ll still need to complete the task,” Richard declares, his voice carrying only so far as the next hill; he doesn’t turn to see when Ben pauses just behind him - he knows the other man well enough to see him in his mind without looking.

“I know.” The answer is simple, without indulgence or emotion, just flat and informative. Richard knows that Ben has always felt the need to approach him with a firm hand, as if he has something to defend from Richard’s scheming power. He wishes Ben would realize that Richard is not an agent of himself, but of the Island; and so, as long as the Island still needs Ben, Richard will need him as well.

Besides - time is running out for the both of them, and Richard only wishes that Ben could see that they’re playing for the same team, now.

“And you’re willing to leave this place?” Richard asks, his tone hardening as he turns to face those bloodshot-blue eyes, so red they almost look violet; it’s been a hell of a few days. “Knowing that it will change nothing?”

Ben takes a step, leveling the heels of his feet with Richard’s as he moves to look him in the eye; Richard sees the dying boy there, but only for a moment - only in the sheer gleam of will smoldering in his gaze. “It will change _everything_ , Richard,” he says softly, lethal. “You of all people have to know that.”

He does, in theory. The Island had only ever been moved twice before, but both attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. It bought them time, yes, rid them of some annoyance, some threat that never should have come there to begin with - mistakes on Jacob’s part for allowing them in the first place - but they had always been found in the end. Always. And Richard, for his part, wasn’t surprised at it; if there was one thing he’d learned about people, it was never to underestimate their determination. He’d spent almost five-hundred years searching for this place, not knowing if it was even real. Having seen it once, he’d have never stopped looking.

So perhaps it was a fool’s errand, a risk that in the taking, proved nothing. 

“We are a part of this Island,” Ben answers the unasked question, and it feels as if he believes it; has to believe it. “It won’t abandon us forever. We just have to be... _patient_.”

He draws the last word out with dry humor and subtle accusation; Richard can almost see the scar on his chest, even though its covered. Just be patient. Oh, the irony.

“So you will do what I won’t?”

Ben’s eyebrows lift in askance, studying Richard’s face and reading the words for what they are - commentary, conversational bait, but underneath it, self doubt in the only way he can convey it. “I will do what you _can’t_ , Richard,” he replies in genuine surprise, his eyes narrowed and lit up with a sort of playful sarcasm, an ironic disbelief. “This place won’t _let_ you leave.”

There’s something to say for the man whom, in leaving himself vulnerable, is deemed unworthy of Benjamin Linus’ ridicule, but instead deserving of his reassurance; and it is in that moment that Richard knows there was a reason that he saved him. Suddenly the silence, the desertion of the one thing that seemed to sure in his life, the one voice that spoke louder than the others, that guided him with a firm yet benevolent hand - the rejection of Jacob doesn’t sting as deeply anymore, doesn’t fester like a wound unclosed against the whistling wind. It is a scar, and it throbs deeper against his heart than it should, but it is healed.

There was a reason he saved Ben. He knows this. And he knows that one day, Jacob will see it, too. He has to.

____________________

 

**XV. _Factum est_**  
(It is done)

 

There hasn’t been a flash in a very long time, but when it happens again, as he single-handedly razes what’s left of The Swan to the ground, he is acutely aware that it is he, and he alone, who is being swept up in the melee. This is his final lesson, the last calm before the storm comes and washes them all away. And that’s all he wants, really - a return to the tabula rasa; his very own clean slate.

He’s made so many mistakes.

Within the blink of an eye it is the year 1348, and then 1954; it is 1760, it is 2006, it is 1974, and eventually, it all starts making sense. Without even thinking, he knows what he has to do. He is an oracle in Pompeii who claims the desperate need for the priest called Iacobus to go north; he is a trader in Strasbourg who saves a Jew named Jacob from the stake. He signs the papers himself to document his own exodus to America, and he makes his escape vessel ready just as he remembers it, and sells it to some deviants off the cost of Georgia. He orchestrates the arrival of the necessary people at the necessary times, traveling to all the corners of the Earth to be absolutely sure that the people whom the Island requires reach it with all haste when their time comes. He makes certain that the knife belongs to John, but that he himself does not know it; he sends two of his men to disrupt a picnic in order to keep the conman and his friends from being sent away in a sub. He waits in the wings and watches an innocent boy approach the very edge of death, keeping him alive until his own former self arrives to spare him, to groom him to lead against the wishes of the Man who brought him here, the Man who is more than a man but also less, almost inhuman. He allows the Initiative to thrive until that fateful December morning, and not a moment before, and he persuades a man named Christian to have just one more scotch before he leaves to operate on a pregnant girl named Beth. He waits until the perfect moment, when his former self is nowhere to be found, to approach John Locke, who is watching a man called Sawyer, and hand him a file on a man who will one day be called LaFleur; some years later, but also in mere moments, he makes damn sure to stand in precisely the right place to find John and remove the bullet from his leg before the torch in his hand burns out.

He makes certain that the priest of Isis places first the tyet, and then the ankh within his robes, so that when he takes them out, the ankh is further from his mother’s unnaturally short reach, making it an act of instinct to chose the funerary amulet for her own, to be blessed with sacred demise instead of being cursed with eternal life.

He sees her face again, his mother; and with tears in his eyes, he remembers.

He is persistent, but never overwhelmed, never concerned, for all this has already come to pass - he must only see it through. He is the cause as much as the effect, and it’s both unnerving and invigorating; he feels himself become both less than he is, and simultaneously more - so much more than he ever could be.

And suddenly, everything comes together; every innocuous piece of detail, paper-thin and translucent beneath the waning sun on their own, they all fall into place, layer upon layer of meaning until he can’t see through it anymore; until he doesn’t have to. He understands now. He knows exactly what to do, knows exactly why he is here.

Nothing was a mistake. Nothing. There have never been any mistakes.

There is a long forgotten tang that erupts across his tongue, and his lips stretch into a tight smile as he recognizes what it means. The War is coming, and he is where he is meant to be - he is here because he understands the connections, comprehends the vagaries; because he believes in things that other people can’t, knows the truth behind the concept of destiny.

He feels the presence of Jacob nearby, soft and feathery like a breeze, but keeping its distance; Richard smiles a little broader, a menacing edge gleaming against his teeth as his eyes drift closed - Jacob knows what he has seen, and knows that he has no power over Richard any longer. And while Richard will never speak to it, never admit in words, he feels vindicated - _finally_. 

It all makes sense, now, and as his bare feet sink into the dew-damp soil at the edge of the trees, steady and awaiting oblivion, he knows once and for all why the Island chose him out of everyone, saved him to face the end.

Because once upon a time, Richard Alpert was a sinner. But on this Island, he’s nothing less than a god.


End file.
